TEXAS TECH BASKETBALL NOTEBOOK

Published: Saturday, March 09, 2002

Hammel OK

Bob Hammel, best friend of Texas Tech head coach Bob Knight, was released from St. Luke's hospital in Kansas City Friday after collapsing with a seizure during Thursday's game between Tech and Texas A&M.

Knight visited with Hammel at the hospital until about 8:30 p.m. Thursday. Hammel, 67, is the former sports editor of the Bloomington (Ind.) Herald-Times. The two friends were in a joking mood by the time Hammel recovered.

"They did a brain scan on him, and he's 67," Knight said. "I was looking at the brain scan, and one of the doctors said it looked like there was a little deterioration on the brain. I said, 'Well, I sensed that when he was about 40 years old."'

Hammel said he had no recollection of his seizure, which created a 10-minute stoppage of play in the second half of Thursday's game.

When he woke up Thursday, Knight said, "He looked up at me and said, 'Last I remember, we were 10 to 12 points ahead. Did we win?"'

Tech beat A&M 80-71.

Marshall's technical

Tech committed its first technical foul of the season Friday when sophomore guard Mikey Marshall pushed Oklahoma State's Terrence Crawford with two minutes, 13 seconds left in Tech's 73-51 win.

"Crawford was kind of holding my arm, and I was trying to get him off of me," Marshall said. "I was trying to push his arms off of me. The referee had to do what he had to do to try to keep charge of the game."

OSU made one of two technical free throws afterward to cut Tech's lead to 69-44.

Pawel's improvement

Tech forward Pawel Storozynski came off the bench to play 20 minutes, including 12 in the second half Friday, after starting and playing just four minutes Thursday against A&M.

Storozynski finished with two rebounds, two assists and two turnovers.

He spoke with Knight briefly Thursday and was told to run the floor harder than he had been. "Be more aggressive," Knight told him.

Here we go again?

After Tech took a 30-17 lead at halftime Friday against OSU, some Tech personnel experienced a flashback of sorts. The last time Tech played the Cowboys, the Red Raiders blew a 15-point lead and lost 64-62 on Feb. 6.

Preventing it from happening again was a topic of discussion at halftime.

"We lost some leads during the course of the year," Knight said. "We lost a couple games because of it, and so I was just sitting there waiting for the bomb to drop, and it never did. We had to substitute some, and I thought we were a little bit shaky on offense once a while, but I thought defensively, we did a pretty good job throughout the whole course of the ball game."

Zero-shot line

Tech junior guard forward Nick Valdez earned his first start since Jan. 26 Friday against OSU. Sticking to his game of scrappiness, he played 20 minutes but attempted no shots. He finished with two rebounds, two assists, two turnovers and four personal fouls.

Tourney history

Friday's win against OSU in the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals is the first Big 12 quarterfinal win in Tech history. Tech's only other previous Big 12 tourney victory came in 1997. Tech was 1-5 in the Big 12 Tournament before this year.